Team Norwegian's Celebratory AMA

Thinking about it? We dream about it every night! ;)

We're already planning what we want to change in tree 2.0, but we do have to graduate from beta first. Then it's up to Duo to either finish up some testing they're currently doing on tree versioning, or choose us as testers.

I can confirm that we are very intent on beginning this project as soon as humanly possible! The sooner we are able to clean up what we need to in this tree and add some very helpful words, the better.

Flattery disguised as a question? I like it! ;)

The secret to adding many useful phrases is... making a really long tree.

In addition to that I think it's important to note that we were all language learners first, giving us a good idea of what we would want from a course like this. We also had extensive experience with other Duolingo courses prior to working on the Norwegian course, which both familiarised us with the tree structure and gave us plenty of inspiration to draw on.

Luke also has experience with teaching himself Norwegian, which makes him uniquely qualified to single out the things that we as natives may not even realise need to be taught.

I think the ability to think like a learner is key to being a good teacher.

No, it's so top secret that nobody has any idea! Bonus skills are serious business.

We are able to test them now, which is promising news.

Hmm, that's actually a very good question.

One of the most challenging things about constructing the tree is that everything is connected; the words are tied together through the sentences they share, so the more words we add the more rigid the tree becomes. Because of this, doing seemingly simple things like moving a single word from one skill to another can actually be a quite a puzzle! This means that planning ahead becomes very important.

The easiest part for me is finding the motivation for working on the tree! I might complain about it being a bit of a puzzle, but then again... I quite like puzzles. I also love coming up with entertaining sentences, and learning new things about both English and Norwegian every single day. Then there's the added bonus of getting to interact with the rest of my team, as well as with our lovely learners. And last, but not least: the pleasure of creating something that feels worthwhile. :)

With ease? No.
With a dictionary and some dedication? Absolutely!

I haven't read his books, but skimming through a couple of excerpts the language is simple enough. Assuming you actually know the course vocabulary when you complete the tree, I think you'd get the gist of what's written in the books, but you'd still run into a lot of new words.

I think you need a good dose of stubbornness to get through your first book in any language, but if you have it in you then it's a great way to learn - and a very rewarding experience. :)

I've always enjoyed language as a tool for expressing myself, for learning new things, and for connecting with people, cultures, and times past.

I think the first time I experienced real passion for learning a language, not merely seeing it as a tool or an extension of something else, was when I took Latin in high school. Never before, or after, have I had such a passionate, compassionate, knowledgeable and wise teacher as I had in that subject. I'm still in awe!

I remember wanting to learn Latin in middle school because I thought it was the "smart language." Then some guy at the tennis courts where I took lessons dissuaded me from going down that road, telling me, "you can't read a Latin newspaper, or listen to the radio in Latin." This made me think that French, which my mom and sister took in school, was a better option. Although I took French for many years, I only got very good at it after discovering Eddie Izzard performing standup in French, and that's when I caught the language bug. Knowing very little and then realizing you know more is a wonderful feeling.

The Swedish dialects are pretty varied, but most of them sound pleasant to my ear and are easy enough to understand.

Danish, well... what's usually said is that they speak as if they've got a potato stuck in their throats, and I tend to agree. ;) Having said that, I just finished watching a Danish TV series that I really enjoyed (Rita), so Danish sounds pretty normal to me atm.

Icelandic keeps staying true to its roots, and while I think it sounds pretty badass I often struggle to understand it when spoken at a native speed. In written form I can usually piece it together, but that may be partly because I've been exposed to quite some Old Norse through my studies. There's also a lot of good Icelandic music!

I think that's pretty individual.

Personally I like dialects that are a bit soft around the edges, and am less fond of dialects using skarre-r. Maybe it has to do with what I grew up with, maybe not. To complicate things I think some dialects sound better on men, and other better on women.

Whether I like a dialect also depends on whether I like the people who speak it. I've always found people from the northern part of Norway to be very friendly, warm, and easy going, and I'm also partial to their dialects. :)

I knew a few people who were counselors there, including at the Norwegian camp. I applied to be a German counselor, but I never was accepted. It's a cool idea.

We do not have any plans to at this time, for a few reasons.

I would say that it's sufficiently different to qualify as a language of its own, but I'm hardly the most qualified person to have tackled that question. ;)

Whether something is defined and accepted as a separate language rather than a dialect often ends up having more to do with politics than linguistics.

Thank you, it's a pleasure! :)

The TTS is far from perfect, and butchers a handful of words completely, but I think we've managed to disable the listening exercises for most of the sentences with really poor audio by now. Thankfully, the majority of sentences sound perfectly fine - if at times slightly robotic.

One thing the TTS struggles with is separating present tense verbs from nouns that are written in the same way, which makes the intonation sound a bit off to natives. "skriver" the present tense verb, and "skriver" the noun should sound slightly different. However, this is not something that trips learners up on listening exercises, as it is written the same way regardless, and the differences in pronunciation is minimal to begin with.

Generally, learners seem to struggle the most with listening exercises where the TTS is correctly dropping letters. "Hunden" is an example of this, because the "d" is either softened or dropped completely, and the "e" is dropped as well.

With these sorts of words we see people getting better results once they're past the first checkpoint and have developed more of an ear for the language They learn to distinguish between long and short sounds, between some of the Norwegian vowels that may initially sound a bit too similar to each other, and become more aware of how the words are stressed.

Long time no see, Annie! Welcome back. :)

My cats are well, thank you for asking. While I suspect one of them of understanding Norwegian, neither of them speak it. They seem to speak two very different dialects of Cat.

Tusen takk, I'm glad you like it!

You can order the t-shirts here. :)

I would bribe them, with melkesjokolade.

I know that's something Duo wishes to bring to all courses, but that it requires quite a bit of work.

The old "in-houses" courses, which are the ones that currently have 'Words' tabs, are built on an elaborate tagging system which tags every lexeme according to its grammatical function(s). The current 'Words' tabs utilise this system.

The new, volunteer made courses do not have this elaborate tagging system, so Duo can't just copy over the same 'Words' tab and flash card code and have it work as intended.